Can You Earn Passive Income With Digital Products On Etsy? Etsy is a great place to potentially create passive income by selling digital products. One of the main reasons is that you can automate the delivery of the digital products. Etsy allows you to upload up to 5 digital files (each with a limit of 20mb) in your product listings. For example, the file can be a printable planner, digital birthday card or a children learning workbook. We will go through the more examples later in this guide. Etsy then will help deliver your file to your customers once they purchased the product listing. The files are delivered immediately to customers after purchase. Also, they will be able to go to their purchases afterwards and download the file without involving you. This greatly reduce the work needed on your part. Some design platforms like Corjl and Templett can help you deliver editable templates to your customers. Those designs (like the text and colours) can be edited by customers before they download the files themselves. Examples include editable business cards and editable wedding invitations. It means that once you made your digital designs, you can sell them again and again without you having to send customers anything. The major key to succeed with a passive income digital product shop is to find products that actually sell - Follow the demand! I have written the Etsy Passive Income Playbook which you will discover all the steps to a successful shop that brings you income even when you sleep. For now, let’s look at some of the popular categories of digital products on Etsy to inspire you. Some Popular Tools For Creating Digital Products Canva (overall great option for selling digital designs) Corjl (for hosting editable templates) Templett (alternative to Corjl) Adobe Photoshop Adobe Illustrator Adobe Lightroom (for editing photos & making Lightroom presets) Affinity Photo & Designer (alternatives to Photoshop and Lightroom without a monthly subscription) Gimp (free online alternative to Photoshop) Inkscape (free alternative to Illustrator) Picmonkey (alternative to Canva) Procreate (illustration tool for iPad) Apple Keynote (for creating digital planners for Goodnotes) Creative Market (for getting high quality graphics & fonts to speed up the process) Envato Elements (similarly high quality graphics & fonts. Unlimited downloads on a subscription) Cosmetic Labels Small business owners who want to start a handmade business look for labels for their products. Jar labels, dropper bottle labels, soap labels, and so many more. This is also the niche where we decided to make the process easier for small handmade businesses. Thank You Cards Etsy sellers attach a thank you card with their order to showcase the handmade quality of their products. Downloading a design and printing it at home is a quick solution for them. ‍ Thank you card Printable Planners Planner is a great way to help sellers stay organised and focused in their goals. It’s a slightly seasonal product with it being more popular in the beginning of the year. Buyers download and print out the planner at home to use them immediately. ‍ Printable planner ‍ Digital Planners Digital planner on iPad is also very popular. Notability and Goodnotes are two of the most popular apps that people use them on. ‍ Digital planner for iPad Logos Every business should have a professional logo. It gives a professional first impression to customers. Logo design is a big category on Etsy where there are tough competition but also a lot of demand. ‍ Logo design Business Cards Business card is important to showcase your brand and its information. Business card design is a hot and competitive niche. ‍ Editable business card Etsy Shop Assets What better to sell on Etsy than something made for Etsy sellers? Banner, Shop Icon, etc are needed for almost all sellers on Etsy and some sellers find a lot of success selling them. ‍ Etsy shop kit Social Media Templates Most businesses have social accounts like Instagram and Facebook. Selling post templates can save shop owners a lot of time to create professional looking social accounts. ‍ Pinterest post template Printable Cards (Birthday, Invitations) Ever hosted a party and needed to buy a bunch of invitation cards? Me too! You can sell card designs like that and have customers print at home themselves and save them the hassle. ‍ Birthday card Self Improvement Printables Printables like fitness planner and diet planner aim to improve the wellbeing of buyers. ‍ Wedding Printable Wedding printable is a huge niche on Etsy. Everything you can think of that is related to a wedding can be found on Etsy. Invitation, table menu, baby shower games and so many more! ‍ Wedding table card Event Printable These make organising an even so much easier. You can design printables like birthday banner, decor, invites and selfie frame to help buyers save time and money. ‍ Photo frame for events Cafe/Restaurant Printable Opening a restaurant or a cafe requires a lot of time and effort. Why not help their branding by making designs of menu, cafe art, loyalty card and signages? ‍ Menu template ‍ Children Learning Materials Many sellers make learning materials and toys aim towards babies and young children. Cards on alphabets and numbers, toys about shapes, etc. And keep in mind to make them cute for the younger audience. ‍ Leaning posters Ebooks And Guides Have experience that you can teach others? It could be a good idea to write a guide about it and sell it on Etsy. ‍ Guide for pharmacology Workbooks Similar to planners and other printables, workbook is usually aim towards a self-care and self-improvement buyers. They purchase, download and print the material to use instantly. ‍ Workbook on self love Lightroom Photo Presets Lightroom is a popular photo editing app, and presets is a quick way for people to edit photos on the app. ‍ Lightroom presets Phone Wallpapers If you are a digital artist, selling wallpaper arts is a great way for buyers to customise their phone screens. ‍ Phone wallpaper Ios Icon Pack Ever since iOS 14, iPhone users can edit the icons of their apps on the phone. It’s grown to be a very popular niche in 2020 when iOS 14 was first released. ‍ iOS icon pack Wall Art Create digital version of your art by scanning your artwork or creating digitally with apps like photoshop or Procreate. People look for wall art to print themselves to save cost and time. ‍ Travel wall art Resume Templates Many people look on Etsy for professional looking resume templates for their job hunting efforts. They are usually created to be compatible with Microsoft Word and Google Doc. ‍ Resume template Crochet, Knitting, Embroidery, Sewing Patterns Etsy is a great place to sell these patterns if you have the skills and passion to create them. ‍ Knitting pattern Recipe Cards Home cooks and chef always create new recipe, and they want to mark down any good ones they have come up with. Recipe card is an easy way for them to print out the blank card and write down the recipe for future inspirations. ‍ Recipe card Meal Planning Cards These cards are an effective way for shoppers who are looking to lose weight and gain muscles to stay on track. ‍ Meal planner Colouring Books (Adults Or Kids) For kids, colouring book is a creative outlet. But adult colouring books have gained traction in recent years as a way to be creative and de-stress. ‍ Colouring pages Clip Arts Artists create digital art and sell them as clip arts. Usually these are small elements that shoppers buy a big collections of them to either use in their own projects or print them out to personalise their items. ‍ Clip art pack Digital Papers Usually pattern paper designs that buyers print out for scrapbooking and crafting. Digital paper Zoom Background Another recently trendy item, zoom and other online meeting programs have taken off during the times of the pandemic. Customised background can show personality or just simply hide a messy bedroom. Zoom background pack Excel Templates Accounting and profit calculator are two popular templates using Microsoft excel. They are targeted for shop owners that want to get on top of their revenues and expenses. File Types For Etsy Digital Downloads The most common and widely used file types are JPG, PNG and PDF. Which one is the best to use depends on your product. ‍ For example, if you sell a graphic with transparent background, you would need a file type like PNG or SVG. If you are selling an ebook, PDF is probably the way to go. Etsy supports these additional file types: .bmp .doc .gif .jpeg .mobi .mov .mp3 .mpeg .psp .rtf .stl .txt .zip .ePUB .iBook Do Market Research To Determine Viability Of Idea In the best case scenario, you would want to sell a product with high demand and low competition. Here are a few things you can do to ensure your choice is as good as possible. Etsy search bar has a function where it automatically lists the top keywords by using what you have typed in. If you type “silver”, then terms like “silver jewelry” and “silver dresses” may come up. These keywords actually comes from Etsy shoppers and what they are looking for. In general, the keywords that appear as a suggestion in the search bar are likely to have some demand. You can also do this in other marketplaces like eBay and Amazon. For competition, looking at the number of products listed in a particular keyword is a good starting point. T he more products, the harder it is to rank and show up in search results. To analyse more, you can looking at the number of major competitors in a particular niche. Those are sellers with 5000+ sales or 1000+ reviews. The more of those competitors, the tougher it is for a small seller to break in that market. ‍